When a parked pickup caught fire Tuesday afternoon near the intersection of 18th Street and Avenue J, trained volunteer firefighter Clay Young happened to be 150 feet away and with handy access to two recently purchased fire extinguishers.

As if those coincidences weren’t enough, the fire station that answered the call and put out the rest of the fire was only a block away.

Young, the safety and security director of WOB Equities, was talking in the parking lot behind the 1717 Ave. K business with its owner, Walter Breeding, at about 5:30 p.m. when the trouble started.

As the two men were preparing to go home at the end of the workday and were discussing their plans for the next day, Young noticed a young man working nearby under the hood of an early 1990s-model Chevrolet extended cab pickup.

The truck was near Avenue J in angle parking on 18th Street, he said.

“I just happened to look over and see a little drop of fire coming down. When it hit the gasoline on the ground, it ignited. There apparently was gasoline on the ground from whatever problems he was having with the truck,” Young said.

Young knew there was a fiberglass gasoline tank under the truck and realized an explosion could occur if the tank got hot enough to melt.

“There wasn’t any time to think,” he said. “I grabbed one of the fire extinguishers and ran over there.”

Breeding, who is Young’s uncle, had recently purchased two fire extinguishers to install in company trucks. Young directed an extinguisher on the truck’s burning engine while Breeding called 911.

The truck’s owner was in a state of panic and screaming for help, Young said.

When the first extinguisher was exhausted, Young went and got the second extinguisher. He used it on the flames under the pickup, he said.

Young, a former volunteer firefighter in McLean, east of Amarillo, had completed two one-week training sessions at the Texas Engineering Extension Service’s Brayton Fire Training Field in College Station.

When the fire ignited under the truck, Young’s firefighting training kicked in automatically, he said.

A fire engine from Lubbock Fire Station 1 answered the call, according to Robert Loveless of the Lubbock Fire Marshal’s Office. Station 1 is at 1202 18th St., a block away from the blaze.

After both fire extinguishers had been emptied, there was still a small amount of fire in the truck’s engine, but the Lubbock firefighters soon put it out, Young said.

Breeding speculated the gasoline might have been sprayed on the ground from a malfunctioning fuel pump. The engine was running at the time the fire started, but the truck’s owner quickly switched it off, Young said.

What Young described as a drop of fire could have fallen from a burning piece of rubber, he said. He and Breeding left after the fire and did not talk much with the truck’s owner, he said.

The new fire extinguishers were still in the boxes when the fire started, Breeding said. He said he intended to take them in to be recharged.

“I’m glad we had them where we could be of service,” Breeding said.

To comment on this story:

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(photos by Walter Breeding)

A Lubbock firefighter( left of the fire truck, in the back of the shot) looks at the pickup truck that caught fire Tuesday afternoon.

Clay Young, a former volunteer firefighter, puts one of the empty fire extinguishers in a box to be recharged.